Eve of Destruction
by windtear
Summary: Being an account of the birth of the Black Moon Family, by one of its founders.


Eve Of Destruction

by windtear

_Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon_ is copyright Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha, Toei Animation, DiC Productions and Mixx Ltd. This is a fanwork, intended as an homage to the original work, and is not for profit in any way. All rights belong to their original holders.

* * *

_**BOOM!!**_

The wall I was braced against shook against the explosion. About a hundred metres away, the impact caused a hole a full twenty metres across. Shrapnel and shards of the concrete as large across as my head rained around us, along with the water from Sailor Mercury's strike. I cursed as I saw Yuusuke blown backwards - the lolling angle of his head revealing that his neck had been broken.

We were losing.

The assault had not stopped. I peered through the dust as the next wave began.

"JUPITER - OAK - REVOLUTION!!"

Another shockwave rang through my bones and I couldn't help the way my eye rejoiced in the lyric beauty of Sailor Jupiter's attack as it destroyed another portion of our final defence. Oh traitor gift - my blessing and my destruction, my eyes and my talent for art. They had learnt to see and portray all things as beautiful. And to preserve them I had become a terrorist.

I didn't call it "freedom fighting". I was honest with myself. I was fighting for what _I_ held dear.

"MARS - FLAME - SNIPER!!"

As my death came flying down, I found that, rather than my entire life, what flashed before my eyes was the events leading up to this....

* * *

It all started with Sailor Moon. Neo-Queen Serenity, we're supposed to call her now.

I don't. She's not _my_ Queen anymore.

A great saviour, who fought the Darkness, time and again. And won.

I've painted portraits of her. As Sailor Moon, triumphant warrior. I painted her wedding portrait and her coronation portrait. She is a beautiful, magnificent woman and I'm proud I had that chance.

I don't think that's contradictory. You don't have to like a person to approve of their actions and you don't have to like a person's actions to like _them_. But I digress.

She fought so many times for us. I was alive for the last attack. The sensation of being frozen was awful. Unlike natural freezing to death, we were flash-frozen, and those of us who managed to survive it - not many, I may tell you - were conscious while we were encased. Deliberately so. The entity which did it fed off fear and pain and suffering, and we were to be its food source.

If Sailor Moon had not saved us -

But she did. We survivors all were fully aware of it. We all lost someone close, family or friend; most, including me, lost everyone.

We acclaimed her and her Sailor Senshi as our saviours and our leaders, and gleefully crowned her Queen of our small planet. Now truly small; less than one million of the two billion humans who had swarmed our world remained alive.

And we began to heal and rebuild.

It was five years into her reign. Nobody had died since her accession, and we had not thought about that fact. We really should have.

Sailor Moon announced that she and her senshi were immortal. And she was prepared to share immortality, for a price.

Not that she called it that. Not that it was perceived as that. No, all that was required in order to live forever was that you underwent purification via her Imperium Silver Crystal. All the evil would be removed from your heart, and the bonus side-effect was that you'd live forever, never aging, never dying.

I still shudder thinking about it.

I can see why she had to offer it that way. Immortality was, after all, a side effect of the purification, not the main point of the process, and it couldn't be duplicated alone. Besides, who'd want an _evil_ person to live forever?

But I am an artist. For me, painting isn't a reproduction of what I see. I don't just paint the view; I paint how it makes me feel. How it makes me change. I paint the joy I feel that I'm alive. I paint the grief that my parents and friends are not. I paint my happiness. And I paint my pain.

I need my pain.

I need my rage, that my best friend didn't survive the Freeze. I need my hurt, that I'm the only survivor of my family. I need my joy, that I did survive to mourn them. And I need the bitterness, that the Sailor Senshi were able to save only me.

I need my darkness. Unless I can feel the rage, the blaming, the hurt, I can't feel the joy, the forgiveness, the appreciation.

And without it, I can't paint.

But with it, I wouldn't be allowed to live in Crystal Tokyo.

* * *

So that was why I was there, crouched behind a smouldering, crumbling concrete wall, a handmade fireworks cannon clutched in my fist. As long as I knelt there and fought, my soul was intact. I was still complete. I was still _me_.

I survived the Freeze. No way in hell was _I_ going to sit still and let them strip my soul.

Sailor Mars was winding up her little cantrip. The arrow would swiftly descend and take me out.

So be it.

But I'd call a debt in on the way.

As Mars wound up her little spiel, I pointed and lit the little hand cannon. At Sailor Mercury. Fire to water.

"For all of us," I whispered, as the world fell in.

* * *

I didn't die. Nor did Sailor Mercury. She did end up in hospital, but I don't know if it was my weapon or someone else's that put her there.

They saved me. I was dying. Would have died, but those damned senshi pulled me out of the rubble and took me to hospital. Apparently the doctors were fifteen hours in surgery, repairing me.

I wished they hadn't bothered. I tried ripping out my IV (but by then I was on saline drip and it didn't much matter), not eating (well, I didn't know _then_ that it takes sixty-five days plus to starve to death) and looking for high balconies (but by then they knew I was suicidal and had a twenty-four hour watch on me).

Sailor Moon herself came to ask me why. I was recovering, but they still wouldn't leave me to sit by myself. Apparently my constant repeated suicide attempts were known outside the hospital. Or maybe they briefed her. I didn't ask.

"You're the Court Artist. Why did you fight? Why do you keep trying to die?"

I smiled at her. So sincere. So blind. "Because, Sailor Moon, I would rather die in body than die in soul."

She didn't understand.

I didn't expect her to.

But that only proved that I didn't have any choices. If the Queen who understood everyone couldn't understand me, what hope - or place - did I have?

Later that night, I slipped away and jumped off the third floor verandah. But I only broke my leg; my fall was broken by vegetation. I hate lilac bushes.

* * *

It was two days later that the announcement was made.

Those of us who did not wish to accept purification and immortality under the Imperium Silver Crystal might seek to emigrate elsewhere.

I still cry every time I think of that announcement.

But what choice did any of us have?

* * *

Sailor Moon came herself to see us off. Over three thousand of us wanted to leave.

Not that we were bad people - although we did take all the "criminal element" with us. Most were like me - they did not wish to bear the price of immortality.

We had chosen a small planet, circling a nearby star. The system was enclosed in a nebulous but effective asteroid ring, and its moon was made of non-reflective rock. We named it "Blackmoon".

I think it's a pretty name. I liked it then and I still do.

We all lined up to enter our colony ship. It would take a year to get to Blackmoon. Sailor Moon stood at the edge of the landing field.

I stood at the head of the line. For some reason, I'd been elected leader of our colony. I looked at her, and she at me.

I looked at that young-old face that had lived a lifetime before my birth and still couldn't see my pain, and nodded to her gravely. She nodded back.

"So this is the colony?" she asked.

"We are the first generation of the Blackmoon Family, Sailor Moon," I replied proudly.

"I'm sorry that you have chosen not to stay," she said softly.

I didn't reply.

"Please carry with you the good wishes and blessings of the Earth," King Endymion offered gravely.

"Thank you. We will remember the Earth with friendship," I offered in return.

He nodded and linked hands with his wife. I felt -something- touch me, and turning to face my people, I saw it.

On our foreheads, where a small, golden uptilted crescent adorned Sailor Moon's face, a small, downtilted black crescent graced ours.

I frowned. A mark of shame. The leaders of Earth would see that our children grew up thinking that they were disgraced, and that all the rest of the universe would too.

All thoughts of friendship with _this_ planet blew into the ether.

I turned to face the queen of Crystal Tokyo and her husband. They both took a step back as I glared at them. How could they?! How _dared_ they!

"I thank you," I gritted through clenched teeth, "for labelling us with the sigil of our chosen home. We will bear it with pride." Not shame! Never shame! _NEVER_ as they intended!

I turned and led our people into the ship that would take us home.

* * *

And so, that's why. That, my dearly beloved grandchildren, is why all of you have that little crescent on your foreheads and why we live here and why you hear stories about places that are not on the maps.

You were supposed to be bitter, and angry, that we gave you this legacy. But you are complete and whole.

The Gods created angels and humans. Angels they gave only the capacity to do good, and so an angel cannot choose his actions. An angel always does what is right, because he can't do anything else. But humans can do both good and evil, and so a human can choose.

On Earth, they are angels now. They do only good, which is nice, but they can't choose. And I wanted you to be able to choose. While you will do bad things, you'll do good too, but you'll do what you choose. And that fact, that you can and must _choose_, each and every time, will make each act better than any act any angel can perform.

My dear ones; what we wanted, for ourselves, and for you, was freedom. And now, I pray that someday, you will forgive us.

* * *

_Historian's Notes: This personal account is not considered to be an unbiased historical record by the Crystal Tokyo Historical Society._


End file.
